Workforce Readiness Issues to be Tackled in Texas, Los Angeles

On paper, the Jan. 4 FedEx Rose Bowl, which pits the Universities of Texas and Southern California against each other, will decide college football's national champion. On the same playing field therein will be teams from two states trying to tackle something of a slightly different nature - the need for a talented, educated and diverse workforce to support regional economies built on high-paying jobs.

Los Angeles Receives Plan for Building Tech Talent, Businesses

The City of Los Angeles must do more to bridge the gap between its high-tech, research-oriented assets and its low-skilled immigrant workforce if its economy is to grow into the global powerhouse city leaders envision, one recent study finds.

The Los Angeles Economy Project states that the city remains polarized between high-end and low-end jobs and suffers from a labor force that is disproportionately unskilled. Two of the three sectors that defined the Los Angeles economy just two decades ago - manufacturing and financial services - have significantly declined, the report points out. In addition, the city’s diverse business base is severely constrained from participating in the knowledge-based industries that are the key to the region’s long-term prosperity.

While job growth has been stagnant in the city's large corporations, small businesses in Los Angeles have been booming. The creation of thousands of small firms over the last decade have more than filled the employment void left by the big firms, the study shows. The problem is most of these same small firms tend to serve only the surrounding community and employ low-skill workers making low wages – not the kind of jobs that will help the city economy grow and prosper, researchers say.

To help Los Angeles meet challenges in entrepreneurial growth, capital access and workforce training, the study makes a number of recommendations:

• Induce and assist employers and workers in the so-called “underground” to move into the formal economy;
• Provide Los Angeles residents with expanded opportunities for improved educational attainment and English-language proficiency;
• Use the vast research potential of local research institutions such as the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles by encouraging their development of commercially utilizable technology and the transfer of this technology to entrepreneurs who can apply it for the economic benefit of both the universities and the local economy.
• Create initiatives to improve small business access to capital, such as leveraging city funds to provide loss guarantees as a way of encouraging lenders to loan to these firms.
• Focus the city’s worker-training efforts on industries with the greatest potential for growth, stability and good wages;
• Help small business owners in the city’s ethnic neighborhoods take advantage of their growing customer base and international ties by creating partnerships across the city’s diverse communities; and,
• Link job training and economic development objectives with the needs of each community.

“If a well-trained labor force is one key to the city’s future prosperity, the other is an environment that attracts and sustains small and medium-sized businesses,” the study says. “Here, the critical factor is access to reasonably priced capital appropriate to a given firm’s size and stage of growth.”

The study was sponsored by the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Workforce Investment Board and the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power. For more information, including detailed statistics on each of the city's planning areas, and to view the chapters online, visit www.laeconomyproject.com.

Texas Creating 35 Math & Science Academies

In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry announced a $71 million education initiative that will create specialized academies at 35 schools across the state to help Texas students develop a passion for math and science. The governor cited a gap in skills in the two fields among students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Seventy-three percent of white ninth graders passed the state assessment in math in 2005, compared to 38 percent of African American ninth graders and 44 percent of Hispanic ninth graders.

The Texas Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Initiative (T-STEM) is being launched by the Texas High School Project, one of the largest public-private partnerships for education in the country. One of the primary aims of the T-STEM Initiative is to align high school coursework with postsecondary education and economic development activities.

T-STEM will be funded with $20 million in grants each from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Susan & Michael Dell Foundation, $20 million in state funds from the Texas Education Agency (TEA), $10 million from TEA in federal funds, and $1 million from National Instruments, an Austin-based maker of measuring and automation equipment.

Over the next five years, funds will be used to:

• Establish 35 T-STEM academies across the state that will eventually enroll 25,000 students each year, with a special focus on students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds;
• Create up to six T-STEM centers to provide high school educators with the professional development and technical assistance needed to spur higher classroom achievement; and,
• Establish a statewide best practices network so that successful models can be replicated across Texas.

The 35 T-STEM academies, which will start the program in sixth grade, are meant to help spark students' imaginations by engaging them in real-world learning activities and to inspire more of them to pursue a career in science-based fields. The academies are expected to include a mixture of charter schools, traditional public schools and schools operated in conjunction with an institution of higher education.